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faye_dartmouthPART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
PART ELEVEN
PART TWELVE
PART THIRTEEN
PART FOURTEEN
PART FIFTEEN
PART SIXTEEN
-o-
That’s not that. He knows that, and they know that. It’s just that their definition of that now varies wildly, and Five’s too busy making a plan to save his family to worry about their plan to save him.
Time is not without its bitterest humor, at least.
-o-
Five’s confession has made his family more aware of his eccentricities. Five is aware of their awareness, and proceeds to minimize as much of his activities as possible. He starts writing equations in notebooks again instead of the walls, and when his family catches him staring at the window, he tells them that he likes to bird watch.
When this seems weird to them, he asks if they can get something to eat. It is a proven fact that people feel more connected when food is shared. Five is finding so many shared meals frustrating, but it keeps them from being too concerned.
Also, Five’s 13. His metabolism is amazing right now.
Also, food is good.
Shit, decades scrounging for food. Hell, yes, Five will eat ten meals a day just because he can.
-o-
It doesn’t always work, of course. Five has to endure their expected responses with exasperation. His family is good for saving the world, but they are still total idiots.
“It’s normal,” Luther tries to comfort him. “I still wake up some mornings thinking I’m on the moon. I was only there four years, and it’s hard to let go.”
“You’re wasting your energy on this,” Diego reasons. “We went through a lot of shit to get here, and we deserve to enjoy it.”
“Not everything has to be work, Five,” Allison tells him. Her voice is still scratchy, but she smiles a lot more now. “Try having some fun.”
“Addiction,” Klaus tells him with a sage nod. He raises his eyebrows. “They’ve got a program for that.”
As Five scowls, Klaus adds with a grin. “Ben totally agrees.”
-o-
Outside the Academy, the delivery truck makes the same two deliveries up and down the street every day. There are a pair of twin girls with pigtails who jump rope on the corner. A woman with a nondescript black suit coat drinks coffee in her car for exactly three minutes every morning before she goes to work.
Five calculates the probability that any of them could be plants.
The individual probabilities still vary.
The overall probability is still overwhelmingly high.
-o-
At dinner, Five never talks about probabilities. In fact, there are times he almost forgets about the Commission altogether. There are times when Diego tells stories about Mom. There are times when Luther talks about mission planning. There are times when Klaus tells them odd facts about trips they don’t remember. There are times when Ben tells them about something good he remembers. There are times when Allison tells them how things are going with Claire’s custody arrangement.
There are times Vanya laughs.
Fleeting times, the best times. The times Five thinks maybe they’re right, maybe they could be right.
But after dinner, the doorbell rings. A salesman is selling window cleaner for 9.99 a bottle. Luther thanks them for their time, and Five makes another note to factor into his next calculation.
-o-
Sometimes, though, the calculations come up short.
They always come up short, who is he kidding?
His calculations are coming up shorter and shorter, and Five can’t make the pieces parse at all. He can’t pinpoint exact movements, which makes it impossible to predict any actions or determine possible motives.
When that happens, he has to consider the things his family is telling them.
After all, it’s not like they don’t have some valid points. He knows how short sighted those points are, and he knows that their conclusions are willfully optimistic. Most of the time, when he has to listen to their so-called wisdom regarding his suspicions, his first impulse is to laugh.
The problem is, of course, that Five can’t prove them wrong.
Maybe Five’s getting soft; maybe he’s off his game. But it’s cause for doubt.
He knows he has decades of experience. He knows that when something’s off, then something’s off. This is why he’s regarded as the best agent the Commission ever had -- because his instincts aren’t wrong.
That is, perhaps, why his lack of progress is so disconcerting.
It’s Vanya who provides the best insight. “I think you should look into it,” she says, because of course she does. There’s a reason she’s always been the easiest sibling to talk to. There’s a reason that she’s still the only one he’ll talk to about any of this, when given the choice. “I mean, I thought I was crazy for years, and look how that turned out?”
Five knits his brows together and purses his lips. “You’re not scared that something will go wrong?”
She laughs at that. That’s a thing Vanya does now, now that she’s not repressed and now that they treat her like one of them. “Everything will go wrong, probably,” she says. “But if it bothers you, then look into it.”
Five is naturally still skeptical. “You still think I’m crazy, just to clarify.”
“I think you’re traumatized,” she says. “We all got to go back and fix what went wrong for us, but not you. You still are stuck in a body that you don’t belong in, and the things you’ve done and seen and experienced -- Five, that would mess anyone up.”
She’s honest, at least. It’s more palatable from her. “Then why are you telling me to indulge it?”
“Because you can’t deny the things inside you. You have to understand them,” she says. “So you do that however you need to.”
He sighs, finding himself contemplative. “I wish you believed me.”
“Hey,” she says, reaching out to touch his arm. “I do believe you. And the idea of the Commission being after you is plausible. It really is.”
“Then why don’t you tell them that?” he presses. “Why is no one worried?”
“Because, I like to think we’ll figure it out,” she says. “I mean, all we’ve been through. I meant what I said before. There’s nothing we can’t do together. And as long as we’ve got that, there’s no reason to be scared. No reason at all.”
-o-
Five tries to think about that. It’s a point with some validity, all things considered. He’d be foolish not to consider it with some depth and perspective.
Together.
He knows Vanya has the best perspective to make that point. She does. Working together -- that’s how they saved the world, Five knows that as well as Vanya. They had to become more than a team. They had to become a family. That was the trick that saved them, that saved the world. Vanya is right to remind him because he is prone to forget.
Yet, the concession doesn’t invalidate Five’s concerns. Because together is an important concept, but it is not a one-size-fits-all solution to the many problems of life. Sure, it’s easy to forget that since it’s only been a few weeks, but that’s the thing. It’s only been a few weeks. Together is a comprehensive approach. When you get into the nitty gritty, Five is well aware that they each have their own strengths and weaknesses.
In short, they each have their own thing.
Luther, you see, is big. He’s strong. Some might say that makes him the dumb one, but that’s a conclusion that Five considers a bit too reductive. Luther is loyal to a fault, and he values the unit over the pieces. There’s something in that that makes him a good leader, and he’s still the most logical choice for number one.
At Number Two, Diego is fast and furious. The trick is getting him to learn and accept boundaries, because he’s prone to individualism in contrast to Luther’s team-centric nature. Diego doesn’t understand that this is the cutting line between him and Luther and that being second is really in Diego’s best interest. It allows him to play to his strengths, which are, to be fair, many.
Allison’s thing is never something Five has liked. It seems cheap to him, which isn’t fair. Five can cut through time and space at will, and he gets all indignant that Allison can say three words and get whatever she wants. What he appreciates more, coming back into the family as a grown man in a 13 year old body, is how much restraint she shows. Allison can rule the world. She can do it without bloodshed, violence or a hint of conflict. The fact that she’s only used her gifts for a movie career and to make a man fall in love with her is pretty remarkable.
As for Klaus -- well, Klaus is Klaus. This whole ordeal has done two things for Klaus. First, it has made him sober. Second, it has made him powerful. Five won’t admit it, but he’s always resented Klaus, more than the others. Klaus was always useless in the field, but there he was at Number Four. He had never understood what made Klaus more valuable than him, and he’d hated the world for the distinction. He gets it now, and not just because Klaus can channel the dead and has started to show signs of telekinesis. But because Klaus faces the dead on a daily basis. Five nearly went insane in the apocalypse, but Klaus has been facing his own insanity every day for a lifetime, and he’s still standing. That’s impressive.
Ben, being dead, is a bit harder to judge, and it’s safe to say he gets away with a lot. He’s around a lot more often now that Klaus’ powers have stabilized, so he voices his opinion and has more thoughts and all that. Ben has always been a reluctant terror, though he seems to have let some of those compunctions go. It’s not that he likes hurting people, but if you’re already dead, then maybe you’re entitled. Also, Ben can’t hate what’s inside him anymore now that there’s nowhere for any of it to hide. Ben is Ben, in his purest form, and that’s actually pretty cool when you get right down to it.
Vanya’s thing is the newest thing, the hardest to define thing. She’s more powerful than the lot of them put together, but her powers are still raw. They’re new. She’s still discovering them just as much as she’s discovering herself. Sometimes, Five thinks there’s a real risk that she may still kill them by accident, but it’s so much fun to watch her grow into her own skin that he finds the risk acceptable.
All of that is to say that Five doesn’t question each person’s thing. He doesn’t tell Luther how to lead any more than he tells Diego to pull back his emotions in a battle. He doesn’t lecture Allison about the moral relativism of telling the truth, and he has no intention of suggesting the ways in which Klaus makes connections with the deceased. Ben gets to do whatever he wants in the afterlife, and Vanya is free to explore her power and play the violin as she sees fit. Five respects those things because those are not his areas of expertise. He’s old enough to know when to accept the opinions of people who are more experienced and more knowledgeable.
And Five?
His thing?
No matter how the old man censured him, Five’s a time traveler.
He’s the one who worked for the Commission.
The other think he’s crazy, but Five knows himself. He knows his thing.
And he knows something that Vanya’s advice can’t quite encapsulate. A finer detail that matters now that the apocalypse is off. The stakes have changed. The risk has changed.
See, if the Commission is here now, like he suspects they are, then it’s not about the team. This is not a together sort of thing. It’s a Five thing.
Worse, it’s Five’s fault.
So maybe it’s up to Five to fix it.
Alone.
-o-
Except Five’s never alone anymore. There are always people around. Someone is watching TV. Someone is nabbing a midnight snack. There’s music playing. Always something. Five finds it comforting most of the time, but the rest of the time it drives him absolutely crazy.
It’s all or nothing with this family.
Five’s had nothing.
If only all wasn’t so damn hard on his nerves.
-o-
The others have a plan for that.
As expected, it’s not a very good plan.
They want to put him in school.
This is utterly annoying to Five. First, that they think he’ll consent to such an indignity. And second, that he hasn’t suspected that their plotting would lead to this type of betrayal. He’s been so preoccupied with the Commission, that he hasn’t been on the lookout for his own family.
Shit, he’s getting sloppy in his own age.
To make matters worse, they defend their argument quite vigorously.
“We all missed out on school -- like, real school,” Luther says. “So you’d be going for all of us.”
“I don’t want to go for any of us,” Five objects. “If you want to go so bad, then do it yourself.”
“You know, I actually like that idea,” Klaus says. “Do you think they’ll let me back into kindergarten? Or, you know, seventh grade?”
“I’ve heard middle school is the worst,” Ben confides.
“But I think it’d be kind of funny, all those little kids who think they know what they’re doing,” Klaus says. “I think we’d have a lot in common.”
Five scowls but doesn’t dignify that comment with any targeted response. Instead, he glares at the rest of them and shakes his head. “There’s no way I’m going to school.”
“Someone is bound to notice that we’ve got a kid running around,” Diego says. “You’ll get picked up for truancy.”
“Yeah, and I’d like to see those charges stick when they figure out that I’m legally supposed to be in my 30s,” he says. “Did Dad even file a missing persons report? Or am I dead?”
They exchange uncertain looks, and Allison attempts a softer tactic. “We all need to maintain some connection to the world or we’ll get too isolated, just like dad,” she says. “We need to join gyms, participate in book clubs, work part time jobs.”
“I’ll do any of those things,” Five says. “But I’m not going to be enrolled in school with a bunch of mindless adolescents who think more about their hormones than anything else. And teachers? You think there’s a teacher out there who can teach me anything that I don’t already know? And what the hell am I going to talk to the kids about? I’m 58, damn it. I’m not interested in pop music and memes.”
“We didn’t say you had to go,” Vanya interjects before someone else can make an argument that Five will hate. “Just that we think it might be good for you.”
She says it because she cares. They’re all saying it because they care.
That’s a little weird to the point that Five’s not quite sure what to do with it. He still resents the notion of going to school with actual 13 year olds, but the concept that his family is here to care about him is oddly reassuring. You can’t have conversations with a mannequin for 30 years because you actually don’t miss your family.
Five sighs. “I understand the thought,” he says. “And maybe for high school I’ll entertain the notion.”
“Okay,” Vanya says. “And what about until then?”
Five snorts.
If only they knew.
-o-
No one else talks about school again, but the suggestion is disconcerting enough for Five to take action. He needs to be careful because the Commission is watching him but so is his family. Right now, Five’s not sure which one has worse intentions for him.
He does, therefore, take some of their advice to heart. If this is about developing outside interests, then Five has just the thing. Sure, it’s not a book club or part time job, but tracking the Commission while it tracks him still counts as far as he’s concerned.
As long as he gets out of the house for extended periods of time each week, it will invariably count for his siblings as well.
Besides, getting out is good. Five can’t hide from this; he doesn’t want to hide from this. He makes a point to leave without telling anyone, just to prove too them all that he doesn’t need their approval or supervision.
Still, he doesn’t go far.
He doesn’t want to make himself an easy target.
More importantly, he doesn’t want to leave his family vulnerable.
That’s the logic of it all. The fact that he stays within a mile of home has nothing to do with the fact that he feels like panicking every time he crosses by the Red Church building at the end of the block. This has nothing to do with his untreated PTSD that makes him terrified that walking out of the house in a huff will lead to another apocalyptic turn that he has to spend a lifetime rectifying.
It’s just that Five needs a hobby.
The Commission is his hobby.
Totally simple.
-o-
The theory is simple.
The application, not so much.
Because the Commission? Is never simple.
And if he doesn’t get something concrete soon, then he’s going to drive himself crazy with the possibilities.
For example, the girl at the coffee shop, the one who never looks at him funny when he orders a double espresso, she laughs when she writes his name on his cup and she always dots the i with a heart. She never flinches when he says his name is Five. She’s got this long, blonde ponytail, and Five thinks she’s either the sweetest person on Earth or she’s an agent.
He doesn’t rule out the possibility that she’s both.
The checker at the grocery store is no better. The guy asks if Five wants paper or plastic in a bored, monotone voice, and he’s got these dead, dead eyes that seem to look through Five. Possibly an optical implant. He could be sending footage back to the Commission every time Five buys marshmallows. At home, he tests the marshmallows for foreign chemicals just to be sure this is not a creative attempt to poison him. It’s not, but he still makes a point to watch what he says or does at the grocery store.
Those are just two examples.
Five has dozens.
Not all of them are agents; he knows that.
Not all of them have to be.
It only takes one.
And if Five knows the Commission, they’ve probably sent more than one.
-o-
It’s more than a month since they’ve been back in the so-called present, and everyone else is acclimating. In fact, they’re becoming surprisingly normal. It’s mundane.
Vanya is back to teaching violin lessons. Luther has fully organized dad’s office for Academy usage, and Diego is finishing the the security renovations inside. They invest in new smart phones for the whole family to streamline communication. Allison flies back out to California to square things up with her ex-husband, and Klaus actually manages to finish a knitting project. It’s a horrid looking scarf that Luther wears all the time when it’s presented to him. No one has the heart to tell him that Diego rejected it first.
Ben learns to play piano.
Mostly because he can.
Five doesn’t go to school. He drinks a lot of coffee. And he contemplates how long he has before the Commission makes a move on him.
-o-
He wakes up at night in a cold sweat. Struggling to breathe, he opens the window and sees a catch perched on his fire escape. It blinks at him.
He blinks back.
Then it’s gone.
He closes the window and closes his eyes.
When he opens his eyes, his breathing is under control. He grabs his notebook and heads down to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. As far as he’s concerned, there’s no point sleeping now.
To be fair, however, Five’s not sure what the point of anything is anymore.
-o-
Five sleeps a little the next night. A little more after that. He concludes that the nightmares are the problem. If he just learns to never sleep, things would be much better. This is impractical, naturally. But he uses the phone his siblings bought for him and tracks the cat’s movement up and down the alley for a week straight before concluding that it’s probably not a threat.
That’s one threat eliminated.
Only a couple of hundred left to substantiate.
-o-
Honestly, Five’s a little surprised the Commission hasn’t made a move yet.
More than a month of pure observation?
Five wonders if he’s not a target -- again.
He wonders if maybe they’ve accepted the change in the timeline.
This seems unlikely, but perhaps a change in management would bring a change of perspective. Maybe it is simply possible to change what will be by sheer and steadfast refusal of what has been.
Alternatively, he wonders if the timeline has changed and now a new apocalypse is coming, one that Five is not at all prepared for. Perhaps their mission is to observe Five to make sure he never finds out and as long as he remains ignorant, then they’ll keep their distance. The Commission is not afraid of collateral damage, but they often prefer to minimize their involvement until absolutely necessary.
This seems more likely, though overly ambitious. Most missions do not require more than one or two weeks, tops. To sit around and observe for this period of time is a waste of resources.
Is it possible, then, that he’s another recruit? Are they trying to wait for the right time to cut him a deal?
Would he say yes this time?
Would he have sufficient reason to say no?
At this point, Five wishes they would make their move just so he doesn’t have to speculate any longer.
Wishes are the things of childhood fantasy. If he believes wishes come true, then maybe he belongs in a damn public school after all.
-o-
“You, of all people, have to worry a little,” Five says to Diego when they’re watching security footage one night. “You have strong investigative skills. You don’t like to make assumptions. Surely you think about the idea that I’m right?”
Diego snorts a little, like it’s a joke. “You’re still on that? That this isn’t over somehow?”
“Yes, I’m still on that,” Five tells him tersely. “And you’re telling me that it really doesn’t cross your mind?”
Diego rolls his eyes. “Come on, Five,” he says. “Don’t make me have Luther call another family meeting. Vanya has been getting names of therapists--”
“I’m serious,” Five says, pointedly ignoring Diego’s veiled threats. “What if we’ve just delayed things. Changed it somehow. What if the Handler was right and the apocalypse is just meant to be.”
Diego takes the reiterated question a little more seriously. He shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “Not much we can do, I guess.”
Five frowns, finding that answer wholly unsatisfactory. “If there’s nothing we can do, then why are we sitting here messing around with surveillance.”
“We have to get the Academy up and running again,” he says. “We’re not equipped to save anyone, much less the world.”
“And you think security cameras will help?”
He’s not trying to be condescending, except he totally is.
Diego at least knows him well enough not to take it personally when he’s a prick. “I think it can’t hurt,” he says. “We can’t chase ghosts, Five. We have to deal with real and present threats.”
Five crosses his arms over his chest in a huff.
He hates when his siblings are right.
-o-
Being right about something, however, doesn’t make you right about everything. Five notices the way the bus turns the corner with a wobble, like it’s hovering in and out of time. He’s seen that before with other plants from the Commission. It’s the quantum fluctuation of the timeline being changed. Anyone out of time places an inherent strain on the time continuum. Small phases in and out of focus are to be expected.
Or, Five concedes, it could be a trick of the sun.
There’s no way to know for sure.
-o-
He picks up Allison from the airport. The others object since he can’t legally drive, but Five dares anyone to stop him. Besides, he promises to take his phone, and that seems to make it go over a little easier.
She looks surprised to see him, but she doesn’t say anything when he loads her luggage and gets behind the wheel.
“How’s Claire?” he asks.
She gives him a smile and a sideways look. “She’s good.”
“And your custody battle?”
“I made progress,” she says.
Five pulls into traffic. “Did you rumor the judge?” he asks, and there’s no malice in the question. He’s genuinely curious. That’s what he would do, if he were her.
“No,” she says. “I’m doing it right.”
“What makes that right?” he asks.
“You can’t take shortcuts in life, Five,” she says. “You know that.”
He looks at the road with a shrug. He can’t deny that. “Still,” he says. “She’s your daughter.”
“More reason to do it right,” Allison says as she pulls out her phone to check her messages. “We shouldn’t lie to family.”
Five thinks about that as he waits for traffic. “But should we always tell the truth?”
“Well, there’s discretion, of course,” she says. “Not all truths need to be told. You have to think, who gains from the truth? Or are you just hurting someone unnecessarily?”
Five nods because that makes sense.
That might make a lot of sense.
-o-
See, this is the truth Five knows.
First, he knows the Commission is following him.
Second, he knows he has no proof that the Commission is following him.
Third, his family already thinks his concerns are unfounded and a sign of his emotional instability.
Fourth, while he cannot determine the Commission’s exact motives, he has good reason to assume that their intentions are not neutral. Either he’s being guarded against as a potential threat or the Commission is stalking him out of personal vendetta. In any case, his life is not his to live.
Fifth, his very presence, therefore, is a threat to his family.
Sixth, the longer he lets this go on, the more at risk his family may be. If the Commission is playing a long game against him, then everything he does is being catalogued and assessed. This is clearly a tactic to gain operational advantage when the Commission does finally make their move.
Seventh, if Five presents this chain of logic to his family, they will consider it seriously. He’s brought up his concerns once to little avail, but his position is stronger now. Even if they don’t think he’s right, they’ll talk him through the logic, which can only solidify the conclusions he’s making. Ultimately, this seventh point reiterates the family feel-good they’ve been planning since they jumped back to this time period.
Eighth, point seven is the biggest risk of all. Because if they work together, they’ll eventually agree with him. If they agree with them, they’ll come up with a plan of attack. This attack will put them directly in harm’s way.
Ninth, Five started this to save his family. The idea of putting them at risk for his own personal gain is not something he knows how to tolerate. He can’t even humor it.
Tenth, Allison is right. Truth is important but only when it is constructive. Omissions are not lies any more than they are truths. Ignorance does not make people guilty or innocent, but it can keep them comfortably safe for the time being.
Ultimately, Five is the cause of this problem. If Five asks for help, he will get help at the expense of his family. Therefore, Five should fix this problem himself and come up with an independent plan that does not unnecessarily worry his family and may actually keep them from harm.
Besides, this train of logic concludes that the worst case scenario from keeping his secret is that it’ll get him killed. If that happens, he’ll be too dead to worry about how pissed off the others will be.
Five intends that as a consolation.
For some reason, it’s not.
-o-
Five tries to be resolved. He’s good at resolve. At least, he used to be. He seems to be off his game now, though. Over lunch, while Klaus is making macaroni and cheese from a box -- badly -- Five has to ask.
“When did you start the drugs?”
It’s abrupt, sudden, insensitive and probably rude.
Klaus only laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s heard all day. “Not soon enough.”
Five sighs, mentally acknowledging that his bluntness was probably the wrong tact where Klaus was concerned. “But it was a conscious choice,” he says. “You wanted to escape.”
Klaus raises his eyebrows. “Are you serious?”
“Yes,” Five says. “I want to know why you started using drugs.”
Klaus scoffs, but he sobers -- metaphorically -- just a bit. The water on the stove is starting to boil. “I literally see dead people when I’m clean,” he says, ripping open the box of macaroni. “Pretty sure you’d want to escape, too.”
“But just because you ignore a problem doesn’t mean it’s gone away,” Five says. “How did you deal with that?”
“Uh, more drugs?” Klaus says. He pours in the noodles with a hiss of smoke. “I mean, I used a lot of drugs. A lot of really good drugs.”
Five shakes his head because they’re getting off track. “So you continued your drug use even though you knew it wasn’t really address the real issues in your life?”
Klaus nods along. “Yeah, pretty much.”
This is something Five allows himself to consider. The idea of ignoring the problem has some inherent appeal on an emotional level, but Five’s always resisted it. He prefers logic and reason when he has the choice, and pure escapism just hardly seems prudent. But he’s going on two months of this insanity, and he’s not sure how long he can do this. This is the point when escape -- be it drugs or contracts with a temporal assassination agency -- look pretty good.
“Was it worth it?” Five asks finally.
Klaus seems wistful as he stirs the noodles idly. “I thought so sometimes,” he says. “But you always need a bigger high to make it keep working. You always just need a little more to take the edge off, and really, you still know they’re there. I couldn’t hear them anymore, but I could feel them. I could always feel them.” He grimaces at the thought. “That was the worst, honestly. Even when I passed out, I knew they were there.”
Five dispels with the starkness of Klaus’ own mental imbalances, and he asks an assessing question instead. “So being sober is better?”
Months into this thing, it seems funny that Five’s only asking this now. That he’s probably the only one to ask it at all.
Klaus looks a little surprised, but pleasantly so. His lips twist up ruefully. “I think better is kind of a strong term,” he admits. “I mean, it’s dead people all the time now. Every time I turn around, I have to ask if someone is corporeal before I start talking to them. It’s just so tedious.”
Klaus is making light of it in the way that only Klaus can, and Five finds himself strangely grateful for it. Klaus deserves better from Five, probably. Klaus has probably deserved better from everyone his whole life, but it seems the only people who have ever listened to Klaus are the ones who are already dead.
Someday, if Five ever figures out the Commission, maybe he’ll have the time and energy to be a better brother.
Someday.
But not today.
“If you had to do it again, start all over,” Five asks instead, “would you still take that first hit?”
At this, Klaus is quizzical. “And if you had to do it again,” he exchanges, stirring the pot again. “Would you still make that leap to the future?”
It’s rhetorical of course, and it’s not about a question of right or wrong. It’s a debate of eventualities, about how some people are just meant to do some things. The idea that you could avoid the horror is appealing, but the reality that you’d exchange one nightmare for another is too pressing to ignore.
All the things in life you can escape.
You can’t escape yourself.
Five watches as Klaus attempts to drain the macaroni, instead managing to drop the strainer and all the cooked noodles into the sink. Klaus cries out in apparent anguish. “My dinner!”
“It’s literally the easiest meal you can make,” Five chides.”
Klaus turns around, sheepish and desperate all at once. “Do you know how to make anything?”
Five grunts and gets to his feet with a roll of his eyes. “You really are useless, aren’t you?”
“So I missed out on the macaroni and cheese superpower,” Klaus says. “Kill me.”
“Too much effort,” Five says and he reaches for the keys. “Come on. I’ll buy you something instead.”
“Mac and cheese?” Klaus asks hopefully. “Because, I mean, being sober is great and all, but it makes me hungry, like, all the time. Are you hungry all the time?”
“I don’t care,” Five grouses back. “As long as you order me a coffee while we’re there.”
“And you’ll pay?” Klaus asks, following after him.
Five grunts on his way toward the door. “As long as I can drive.”
“You really are my favorite brother, Five,” Klaus says. “Really.”
And that’s how Five knows that Klaus can’t be trusted even when he’s sober.
Resolve is good, it really is.
When you run out of resolve, Five figures at least there’s still coffee.
-o-
Klaus does order Five a coffee in addition to a plate of macaroni and cheese with a side of pancakes. At the last minute, he requests a hamburger -- rare -- and a milkshake. When the food comes, Klaus eats a little of it all while downing four full sized sodas while Five nurses a single cup of blessedly bitter coffee.
When they’re done eating -- which is a loose description of Klaus antics over the course of lunch -- Five leaves a generous tip with an apologetic smile to their long-suffering waiter, who has been serenaded, hugged, accidentally spit upon and flirted with.
In all, it’s one of their more successful meals out.
Before they go home, Klaus slips off to the “little boys’ room,” leaving Five to mill awkwardly by the front door. He smiles politely at the receptionist, who seems to think he’s an adorable child waiting for his father, and rolls his eyes at the teenage girl who comes through the door with her family and gives him a double take.
As more patrons come in, he slinks off further into the shadows by the badly neglected news stand in the corner where there’s a bulletin board with public announcements. He considers getting out his phone to play an app or something, but he feels like that a sign of weakness. Bored, he scans the bulletin board more closely, wondering if the ad for a place to rent in his neighborhood is suspicious. He tears off one of the numbers for further investigation when he hears an unsettlingly familiar sound.
A whoosh. A thump.
Five freezes.
His heart skips a beat while his palms start to sweat. He feels a rush wash over him, sending a tingle down his spine. His head is momentarily light, and his reflexes are primed. Fight or flight, they call it, but Five only knows how to fight now.
He steadies his stance instinctively, bracing himself. He turns, looking for the source of the sound with anticipation. A message is an escalation. A message is a confirmation. Good or bad, Five can’t say, not until he reads it.
But where?
The news stand is empty? The receptionist is making change at the cash register. The girl has been seated with her family and an elderly couple is sitting in the waiting area.
Then, he hears the noise again.
But it’s less of a whoosh this time.
And the thump is a clank.
It’s tempered by the sound of a child laughing.
Five looks a little further, to the candy machine, where a child has just extracted a gumball. In line behind the child, his brother inserted his quarter. There’s another whoosh, another thump, and another gumball is produced.
Five feels his face go red.
There’s no message.
There’s no confirmation.
The two kids don’t look at Five as they scamper away.
When Klaus is finally out of the bathroom, Five drags him to the car, orders him to put on his seatbelt and sulks as he speeds the whole way home.
-o-
At home, he tells Klaus he has a headache.
“Do you want some aspirin or something? People don’t take aspirin, do they?” Klaus asks, wrinkling his nose. “What about Tylenol? I think we still have Tylenol, or did we throw that out?”
Five knows they’ve thrown all the medications out, but it doesn’t matter. “I don’t need aspirin.”
“But Tylenol?” Klaus inquiries.
“I don’t need Tylenol,” Five snaps.
“You know, coffee can exacerbate headaches,” Klaus tells him sagely. “It’s the caffeine.”
The headache had been a lie, but Five’s starting to feel the start of one talking to his brother about this. “I just need to be alone,” he says. “I need to lay down.”
“Oh,” Klaus says, and he sounds like he thinks this is a good idea. “Yeah, sleep. That’s good. You should do that.”
No doubt Klaus thinks he’s being a good brother who is appropriately aware of Five’s mental well being. Five will allow him this fantasy.
If only because it buys him some much needed time to be alone.
On his way to his room, Ben is waiting for him, arms crossed outside his room.
“You don’t have a headache,” he says.
Five glares at him. “I’ve had a headache every day for the last four decades,” he says, brushing past him. This is easy, considering the fact that Ben is mostly noncorporeal.
Being noncorporeal, Ben can follow him quickly and efficiently. “You shouldn’t like to your family.”
Five snorts. “Since telling them the truth worked so well?”
Ben sighs, following Five into his room. “You’re not okay, Five.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Five snaps, purposefully stepping through Ben to close his door. “But I don’t think aspirin is going to help.”
“You know that’s not what this is about,” Ben lectures him.
“Sure, I know what it’s not about,” Five agrees. “But I’m still trying to figure out what it is about, and I can’t do that while you’re all worried about me being socially adjusted and my caffeine intake.”
“It’s not healthy--” Ben starts emphatically.
“And neither is being hunted by the Commission,” he says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
Five sits down abruptly, pulling out his notebook. He knows Ben can talk to the others, but he still takes liberties with Ben that he won’t around the rest. He doesn’t doubt that Ben won’t keep his secrets, but he doesn’t care. After all, what is Ben going to tell the others? That Five’s still crazy?
They already know that.
And they wanted to get him therapy.
Besides, Ben’s the kind of person who won’t tell a person’s secrets until he deems it absolutely necessary. So unless Five is about to blow his own brains out, he’s probably safe from too much interference where Number Six is concerned.
He’s so busy thinking about this that he realizes he’s not thinking about his calculations. Frowning, he looks up. Ben’s already gone.
That’s for the best, Five tells himself.
He looks back at his calculations, and tells it to himself again.
That’s really for the best.
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
PART ELEVEN
PART TWELVE
PART THIRTEEN
PART FOURTEEN
PART FIFTEEN
PART SIXTEEN
-o-
That’s not that. He knows that, and they know that. It’s just that their definition of that now varies wildly, and Five’s too busy making a plan to save his family to worry about their plan to save him.
Time is not without its bitterest humor, at least.
-o-
Five’s confession has made his family more aware of his eccentricities. Five is aware of their awareness, and proceeds to minimize as much of his activities as possible. He starts writing equations in notebooks again instead of the walls, and when his family catches him staring at the window, he tells them that he likes to bird watch.
When this seems weird to them, he asks if they can get something to eat. It is a proven fact that people feel more connected when food is shared. Five is finding so many shared meals frustrating, but it keeps them from being too concerned.
Also, Five’s 13. His metabolism is amazing right now.
Also, food is good.
Shit, decades scrounging for food. Hell, yes, Five will eat ten meals a day just because he can.
-o-
It doesn’t always work, of course. Five has to endure their expected responses with exasperation. His family is good for saving the world, but they are still total idiots.
“It’s normal,” Luther tries to comfort him. “I still wake up some mornings thinking I’m on the moon. I was only there four years, and it’s hard to let go.”
“You’re wasting your energy on this,” Diego reasons. “We went through a lot of shit to get here, and we deserve to enjoy it.”
“Not everything has to be work, Five,” Allison tells him. Her voice is still scratchy, but she smiles a lot more now. “Try having some fun.”
“Addiction,” Klaus tells him with a sage nod. He raises his eyebrows. “They’ve got a program for that.”
As Five scowls, Klaus adds with a grin. “Ben totally agrees.”
-o-
Outside the Academy, the delivery truck makes the same two deliveries up and down the street every day. There are a pair of twin girls with pigtails who jump rope on the corner. A woman with a nondescript black suit coat drinks coffee in her car for exactly three minutes every morning before she goes to work.
Five calculates the probability that any of them could be plants.
The individual probabilities still vary.
The overall probability is still overwhelmingly high.
-o-
At dinner, Five never talks about probabilities. In fact, there are times he almost forgets about the Commission altogether. There are times when Diego tells stories about Mom. There are times when Luther talks about mission planning. There are times when Klaus tells them odd facts about trips they don’t remember. There are times when Ben tells them about something good he remembers. There are times when Allison tells them how things are going with Claire’s custody arrangement.
There are times Vanya laughs.
Fleeting times, the best times. The times Five thinks maybe they’re right, maybe they could be right.
But after dinner, the doorbell rings. A salesman is selling window cleaner for 9.99 a bottle. Luther thanks them for their time, and Five makes another note to factor into his next calculation.
-o-
Sometimes, though, the calculations come up short.
They always come up short, who is he kidding?
His calculations are coming up shorter and shorter, and Five can’t make the pieces parse at all. He can’t pinpoint exact movements, which makes it impossible to predict any actions or determine possible motives.
When that happens, he has to consider the things his family is telling them.
After all, it’s not like they don’t have some valid points. He knows how short sighted those points are, and he knows that their conclusions are willfully optimistic. Most of the time, when he has to listen to their so-called wisdom regarding his suspicions, his first impulse is to laugh.
The problem is, of course, that Five can’t prove them wrong.
Maybe Five’s getting soft; maybe he’s off his game. But it’s cause for doubt.
He knows he has decades of experience. He knows that when something’s off, then something’s off. This is why he’s regarded as the best agent the Commission ever had -- because his instincts aren’t wrong.
That is, perhaps, why his lack of progress is so disconcerting.
It’s Vanya who provides the best insight. “I think you should look into it,” she says, because of course she does. There’s a reason she’s always been the easiest sibling to talk to. There’s a reason that she’s still the only one he’ll talk to about any of this, when given the choice. “I mean, I thought I was crazy for years, and look how that turned out?”
Five knits his brows together and purses his lips. “You’re not scared that something will go wrong?”
She laughs at that. That’s a thing Vanya does now, now that she’s not repressed and now that they treat her like one of them. “Everything will go wrong, probably,” she says. “But if it bothers you, then look into it.”
Five is naturally still skeptical. “You still think I’m crazy, just to clarify.”
“I think you’re traumatized,” she says. “We all got to go back and fix what went wrong for us, but not you. You still are stuck in a body that you don’t belong in, and the things you’ve done and seen and experienced -- Five, that would mess anyone up.”
She’s honest, at least. It’s more palatable from her. “Then why are you telling me to indulge it?”
“Because you can’t deny the things inside you. You have to understand them,” she says. “So you do that however you need to.”
He sighs, finding himself contemplative. “I wish you believed me.”
“Hey,” she says, reaching out to touch his arm. “I do believe you. And the idea of the Commission being after you is plausible. It really is.”
“Then why don’t you tell them that?” he presses. “Why is no one worried?”
“Because, I like to think we’ll figure it out,” she says. “I mean, all we’ve been through. I meant what I said before. There’s nothing we can’t do together. And as long as we’ve got that, there’s no reason to be scared. No reason at all.”
-o-
Five tries to think about that. It’s a point with some validity, all things considered. He’d be foolish not to consider it with some depth and perspective.
Together.
He knows Vanya has the best perspective to make that point. She does. Working together -- that’s how they saved the world, Five knows that as well as Vanya. They had to become more than a team. They had to become a family. That was the trick that saved them, that saved the world. Vanya is right to remind him because he is prone to forget.
Yet, the concession doesn’t invalidate Five’s concerns. Because together is an important concept, but it is not a one-size-fits-all solution to the many problems of life. Sure, it’s easy to forget that since it’s only been a few weeks, but that’s the thing. It’s only been a few weeks. Together is a comprehensive approach. When you get into the nitty gritty, Five is well aware that they each have their own strengths and weaknesses.
In short, they each have their own thing.
Luther, you see, is big. He’s strong. Some might say that makes him the dumb one, but that’s a conclusion that Five considers a bit too reductive. Luther is loyal to a fault, and he values the unit over the pieces. There’s something in that that makes him a good leader, and he’s still the most logical choice for number one.
At Number Two, Diego is fast and furious. The trick is getting him to learn and accept boundaries, because he’s prone to individualism in contrast to Luther’s team-centric nature. Diego doesn’t understand that this is the cutting line between him and Luther and that being second is really in Diego’s best interest. It allows him to play to his strengths, which are, to be fair, many.
Allison’s thing is never something Five has liked. It seems cheap to him, which isn’t fair. Five can cut through time and space at will, and he gets all indignant that Allison can say three words and get whatever she wants. What he appreciates more, coming back into the family as a grown man in a 13 year old body, is how much restraint she shows. Allison can rule the world. She can do it without bloodshed, violence or a hint of conflict. The fact that she’s only used her gifts for a movie career and to make a man fall in love with her is pretty remarkable.
As for Klaus -- well, Klaus is Klaus. This whole ordeal has done two things for Klaus. First, it has made him sober. Second, it has made him powerful. Five won’t admit it, but he’s always resented Klaus, more than the others. Klaus was always useless in the field, but there he was at Number Four. He had never understood what made Klaus more valuable than him, and he’d hated the world for the distinction. He gets it now, and not just because Klaus can channel the dead and has started to show signs of telekinesis. But because Klaus faces the dead on a daily basis. Five nearly went insane in the apocalypse, but Klaus has been facing his own insanity every day for a lifetime, and he’s still standing. That’s impressive.
Ben, being dead, is a bit harder to judge, and it’s safe to say he gets away with a lot. He’s around a lot more often now that Klaus’ powers have stabilized, so he voices his opinion and has more thoughts and all that. Ben has always been a reluctant terror, though he seems to have let some of those compunctions go. It’s not that he likes hurting people, but if you’re already dead, then maybe you’re entitled. Also, Ben can’t hate what’s inside him anymore now that there’s nowhere for any of it to hide. Ben is Ben, in his purest form, and that’s actually pretty cool when you get right down to it.
Vanya’s thing is the newest thing, the hardest to define thing. She’s more powerful than the lot of them put together, but her powers are still raw. They’re new. She’s still discovering them just as much as she’s discovering herself. Sometimes, Five thinks there’s a real risk that she may still kill them by accident, but it’s so much fun to watch her grow into her own skin that he finds the risk acceptable.
All of that is to say that Five doesn’t question each person’s thing. He doesn’t tell Luther how to lead any more than he tells Diego to pull back his emotions in a battle. He doesn’t lecture Allison about the moral relativism of telling the truth, and he has no intention of suggesting the ways in which Klaus makes connections with the deceased. Ben gets to do whatever he wants in the afterlife, and Vanya is free to explore her power and play the violin as she sees fit. Five respects those things because those are not his areas of expertise. He’s old enough to know when to accept the opinions of people who are more experienced and more knowledgeable.
And Five?
His thing?
No matter how the old man censured him, Five’s a time traveler.
He’s the one who worked for the Commission.
The other think he’s crazy, but Five knows himself. He knows his thing.
And he knows something that Vanya’s advice can’t quite encapsulate. A finer detail that matters now that the apocalypse is off. The stakes have changed. The risk has changed.
See, if the Commission is here now, like he suspects they are, then it’s not about the team. This is not a together sort of thing. It’s a Five thing.
Worse, it’s Five’s fault.
So maybe it’s up to Five to fix it.
Alone.
-o-
Except Five’s never alone anymore. There are always people around. Someone is watching TV. Someone is nabbing a midnight snack. There’s music playing. Always something. Five finds it comforting most of the time, but the rest of the time it drives him absolutely crazy.
It’s all or nothing with this family.
Five’s had nothing.
If only all wasn’t so damn hard on his nerves.
-o-
The others have a plan for that.
As expected, it’s not a very good plan.
They want to put him in school.
This is utterly annoying to Five. First, that they think he’ll consent to such an indignity. And second, that he hasn’t suspected that their plotting would lead to this type of betrayal. He’s been so preoccupied with the Commission, that he hasn’t been on the lookout for his own family.
Shit, he’s getting sloppy in his own age.
To make matters worse, they defend their argument quite vigorously.
“We all missed out on school -- like, real school,” Luther says. “So you’d be going for all of us.”
“I don’t want to go for any of us,” Five objects. “If you want to go so bad, then do it yourself.”
“You know, I actually like that idea,” Klaus says. “Do you think they’ll let me back into kindergarten? Or, you know, seventh grade?”
“I’ve heard middle school is the worst,” Ben confides.
“But I think it’d be kind of funny, all those little kids who think they know what they’re doing,” Klaus says. “I think we’d have a lot in common.”
Five scowls but doesn’t dignify that comment with any targeted response. Instead, he glares at the rest of them and shakes his head. “There’s no way I’m going to school.”
“Someone is bound to notice that we’ve got a kid running around,” Diego says. “You’ll get picked up for truancy.”
“Yeah, and I’d like to see those charges stick when they figure out that I’m legally supposed to be in my 30s,” he says. “Did Dad even file a missing persons report? Or am I dead?”
They exchange uncertain looks, and Allison attempts a softer tactic. “We all need to maintain some connection to the world or we’ll get too isolated, just like dad,” she says. “We need to join gyms, participate in book clubs, work part time jobs.”
“I’ll do any of those things,” Five says. “But I’m not going to be enrolled in school with a bunch of mindless adolescents who think more about their hormones than anything else. And teachers? You think there’s a teacher out there who can teach me anything that I don’t already know? And what the hell am I going to talk to the kids about? I’m 58, damn it. I’m not interested in pop music and memes.”
“We didn’t say you had to go,” Vanya interjects before someone else can make an argument that Five will hate. “Just that we think it might be good for you.”
She says it because she cares. They’re all saying it because they care.
That’s a little weird to the point that Five’s not quite sure what to do with it. He still resents the notion of going to school with actual 13 year olds, but the concept that his family is here to care about him is oddly reassuring. You can’t have conversations with a mannequin for 30 years because you actually don’t miss your family.
Five sighs. “I understand the thought,” he says. “And maybe for high school I’ll entertain the notion.”
“Okay,” Vanya says. “And what about until then?”
Five snorts.
If only they knew.
-o-
No one else talks about school again, but the suggestion is disconcerting enough for Five to take action. He needs to be careful because the Commission is watching him but so is his family. Right now, Five’s not sure which one has worse intentions for him.
He does, therefore, take some of their advice to heart. If this is about developing outside interests, then Five has just the thing. Sure, it’s not a book club or part time job, but tracking the Commission while it tracks him still counts as far as he’s concerned.
As long as he gets out of the house for extended periods of time each week, it will invariably count for his siblings as well.
Besides, getting out is good. Five can’t hide from this; he doesn’t want to hide from this. He makes a point to leave without telling anyone, just to prove too them all that he doesn’t need their approval or supervision.
Still, he doesn’t go far.
He doesn’t want to make himself an easy target.
More importantly, he doesn’t want to leave his family vulnerable.
That’s the logic of it all. The fact that he stays within a mile of home has nothing to do with the fact that he feels like panicking every time he crosses by the Red Church building at the end of the block. This has nothing to do with his untreated PTSD that makes him terrified that walking out of the house in a huff will lead to another apocalyptic turn that he has to spend a lifetime rectifying.
It’s just that Five needs a hobby.
The Commission is his hobby.
Totally simple.
-o-
The theory is simple.
The application, not so much.
Because the Commission? Is never simple.
And if he doesn’t get something concrete soon, then he’s going to drive himself crazy with the possibilities.
For example, the girl at the coffee shop, the one who never looks at him funny when he orders a double espresso, she laughs when she writes his name on his cup and she always dots the i with a heart. She never flinches when he says his name is Five. She’s got this long, blonde ponytail, and Five thinks she’s either the sweetest person on Earth or she’s an agent.
He doesn’t rule out the possibility that she’s both.
The checker at the grocery store is no better. The guy asks if Five wants paper or plastic in a bored, monotone voice, and he’s got these dead, dead eyes that seem to look through Five. Possibly an optical implant. He could be sending footage back to the Commission every time Five buys marshmallows. At home, he tests the marshmallows for foreign chemicals just to be sure this is not a creative attempt to poison him. It’s not, but he still makes a point to watch what he says or does at the grocery store.
Those are just two examples.
Five has dozens.
Not all of them are agents; he knows that.
Not all of them have to be.
It only takes one.
And if Five knows the Commission, they’ve probably sent more than one.
-o-
It’s more than a month since they’ve been back in the so-called present, and everyone else is acclimating. In fact, they’re becoming surprisingly normal. It’s mundane.
Vanya is back to teaching violin lessons. Luther has fully organized dad’s office for Academy usage, and Diego is finishing the the security renovations inside. They invest in new smart phones for the whole family to streamline communication. Allison flies back out to California to square things up with her ex-husband, and Klaus actually manages to finish a knitting project. It’s a horrid looking scarf that Luther wears all the time when it’s presented to him. No one has the heart to tell him that Diego rejected it first.
Ben learns to play piano.
Mostly because he can.
Five doesn’t go to school. He drinks a lot of coffee. And he contemplates how long he has before the Commission makes a move on him.
-o-
He wakes up at night in a cold sweat. Struggling to breathe, he opens the window and sees a catch perched on his fire escape. It blinks at him.
He blinks back.
Then it’s gone.
He closes the window and closes his eyes.
When he opens his eyes, his breathing is under control. He grabs his notebook and heads down to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. As far as he’s concerned, there’s no point sleeping now.
To be fair, however, Five’s not sure what the point of anything is anymore.
-o-
Five sleeps a little the next night. A little more after that. He concludes that the nightmares are the problem. If he just learns to never sleep, things would be much better. This is impractical, naturally. But he uses the phone his siblings bought for him and tracks the cat’s movement up and down the alley for a week straight before concluding that it’s probably not a threat.
That’s one threat eliminated.
Only a couple of hundred left to substantiate.
-o-
Honestly, Five’s a little surprised the Commission hasn’t made a move yet.
More than a month of pure observation?
Five wonders if he’s not a target -- again.
He wonders if maybe they’ve accepted the change in the timeline.
This seems unlikely, but perhaps a change in management would bring a change of perspective. Maybe it is simply possible to change what will be by sheer and steadfast refusal of what has been.
Alternatively, he wonders if the timeline has changed and now a new apocalypse is coming, one that Five is not at all prepared for. Perhaps their mission is to observe Five to make sure he never finds out and as long as he remains ignorant, then they’ll keep their distance. The Commission is not afraid of collateral damage, but they often prefer to minimize their involvement until absolutely necessary.
This seems more likely, though overly ambitious. Most missions do not require more than one or two weeks, tops. To sit around and observe for this period of time is a waste of resources.
Is it possible, then, that he’s another recruit? Are they trying to wait for the right time to cut him a deal?
Would he say yes this time?
Would he have sufficient reason to say no?
At this point, Five wishes they would make their move just so he doesn’t have to speculate any longer.
Wishes are the things of childhood fantasy. If he believes wishes come true, then maybe he belongs in a damn public school after all.
-o-
“You, of all people, have to worry a little,” Five says to Diego when they’re watching security footage one night. “You have strong investigative skills. You don’t like to make assumptions. Surely you think about the idea that I’m right?”
Diego snorts a little, like it’s a joke. “You’re still on that? That this isn’t over somehow?”
“Yes, I’m still on that,” Five tells him tersely. “And you’re telling me that it really doesn’t cross your mind?”
Diego rolls his eyes. “Come on, Five,” he says. “Don’t make me have Luther call another family meeting. Vanya has been getting names of therapists--”
“I’m serious,” Five says, pointedly ignoring Diego’s veiled threats. “What if we’ve just delayed things. Changed it somehow. What if the Handler was right and the apocalypse is just meant to be.”
Diego takes the reiterated question a little more seriously. He shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “Not much we can do, I guess.”
Five frowns, finding that answer wholly unsatisfactory. “If there’s nothing we can do, then why are we sitting here messing around with surveillance.”
“We have to get the Academy up and running again,” he says. “We’re not equipped to save anyone, much less the world.”
“And you think security cameras will help?”
He’s not trying to be condescending, except he totally is.
Diego at least knows him well enough not to take it personally when he’s a prick. “I think it can’t hurt,” he says. “We can’t chase ghosts, Five. We have to deal with real and present threats.”
Five crosses his arms over his chest in a huff.
He hates when his siblings are right.
-o-
Being right about something, however, doesn’t make you right about everything. Five notices the way the bus turns the corner with a wobble, like it’s hovering in and out of time. He’s seen that before with other plants from the Commission. It’s the quantum fluctuation of the timeline being changed. Anyone out of time places an inherent strain on the time continuum. Small phases in and out of focus are to be expected.
Or, Five concedes, it could be a trick of the sun.
There’s no way to know for sure.
-o-
He picks up Allison from the airport. The others object since he can’t legally drive, but Five dares anyone to stop him. Besides, he promises to take his phone, and that seems to make it go over a little easier.
She looks surprised to see him, but she doesn’t say anything when he loads her luggage and gets behind the wheel.
“How’s Claire?” he asks.
She gives him a smile and a sideways look. “She’s good.”
“And your custody battle?”
“I made progress,” she says.
Five pulls into traffic. “Did you rumor the judge?” he asks, and there’s no malice in the question. He’s genuinely curious. That’s what he would do, if he were her.
“No,” she says. “I’m doing it right.”
“What makes that right?” he asks.
“You can’t take shortcuts in life, Five,” she says. “You know that.”
He looks at the road with a shrug. He can’t deny that. “Still,” he says. “She’s your daughter.”
“More reason to do it right,” Allison says as she pulls out her phone to check her messages. “We shouldn’t lie to family.”
Five thinks about that as he waits for traffic. “But should we always tell the truth?”
“Well, there’s discretion, of course,” she says. “Not all truths need to be told. You have to think, who gains from the truth? Or are you just hurting someone unnecessarily?”
Five nods because that makes sense.
That might make a lot of sense.
-o-
See, this is the truth Five knows.
First, he knows the Commission is following him.
Second, he knows he has no proof that the Commission is following him.
Third, his family already thinks his concerns are unfounded and a sign of his emotional instability.
Fourth, while he cannot determine the Commission’s exact motives, he has good reason to assume that their intentions are not neutral. Either he’s being guarded against as a potential threat or the Commission is stalking him out of personal vendetta. In any case, his life is not his to live.
Fifth, his very presence, therefore, is a threat to his family.
Sixth, the longer he lets this go on, the more at risk his family may be. If the Commission is playing a long game against him, then everything he does is being catalogued and assessed. This is clearly a tactic to gain operational advantage when the Commission does finally make their move.
Seventh, if Five presents this chain of logic to his family, they will consider it seriously. He’s brought up his concerns once to little avail, but his position is stronger now. Even if they don’t think he’s right, they’ll talk him through the logic, which can only solidify the conclusions he’s making. Ultimately, this seventh point reiterates the family feel-good they’ve been planning since they jumped back to this time period.
Eighth, point seven is the biggest risk of all. Because if they work together, they’ll eventually agree with him. If they agree with them, they’ll come up with a plan of attack. This attack will put them directly in harm’s way.
Ninth, Five started this to save his family. The idea of putting them at risk for his own personal gain is not something he knows how to tolerate. He can’t even humor it.
Tenth, Allison is right. Truth is important but only when it is constructive. Omissions are not lies any more than they are truths. Ignorance does not make people guilty or innocent, but it can keep them comfortably safe for the time being.
Ultimately, Five is the cause of this problem. If Five asks for help, he will get help at the expense of his family. Therefore, Five should fix this problem himself and come up with an independent plan that does not unnecessarily worry his family and may actually keep them from harm.
Besides, this train of logic concludes that the worst case scenario from keeping his secret is that it’ll get him killed. If that happens, he’ll be too dead to worry about how pissed off the others will be.
Five intends that as a consolation.
For some reason, it’s not.
-o-
Five tries to be resolved. He’s good at resolve. At least, he used to be. He seems to be off his game now, though. Over lunch, while Klaus is making macaroni and cheese from a box -- badly -- Five has to ask.
“When did you start the drugs?”
It’s abrupt, sudden, insensitive and probably rude.
Klaus only laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s heard all day. “Not soon enough.”
Five sighs, mentally acknowledging that his bluntness was probably the wrong tact where Klaus was concerned. “But it was a conscious choice,” he says. “You wanted to escape.”
Klaus raises his eyebrows. “Are you serious?”
“Yes,” Five says. “I want to know why you started using drugs.”
Klaus scoffs, but he sobers -- metaphorically -- just a bit. The water on the stove is starting to boil. “I literally see dead people when I’m clean,” he says, ripping open the box of macaroni. “Pretty sure you’d want to escape, too.”
“But just because you ignore a problem doesn’t mean it’s gone away,” Five says. “How did you deal with that?”
“Uh, more drugs?” Klaus says. He pours in the noodles with a hiss of smoke. “I mean, I used a lot of drugs. A lot of really good drugs.”
Five shakes his head because they’re getting off track. “So you continued your drug use even though you knew it wasn’t really address the real issues in your life?”
Klaus nods along. “Yeah, pretty much.”
This is something Five allows himself to consider. The idea of ignoring the problem has some inherent appeal on an emotional level, but Five’s always resisted it. He prefers logic and reason when he has the choice, and pure escapism just hardly seems prudent. But he’s going on two months of this insanity, and he’s not sure how long he can do this. This is the point when escape -- be it drugs or contracts with a temporal assassination agency -- look pretty good.
“Was it worth it?” Five asks finally.
Klaus seems wistful as he stirs the noodles idly. “I thought so sometimes,” he says. “But you always need a bigger high to make it keep working. You always just need a little more to take the edge off, and really, you still know they’re there. I couldn’t hear them anymore, but I could feel them. I could always feel them.” He grimaces at the thought. “That was the worst, honestly. Even when I passed out, I knew they were there.”
Five dispels with the starkness of Klaus’ own mental imbalances, and he asks an assessing question instead. “So being sober is better?”
Months into this thing, it seems funny that Five’s only asking this now. That he’s probably the only one to ask it at all.
Klaus looks a little surprised, but pleasantly so. His lips twist up ruefully. “I think better is kind of a strong term,” he admits. “I mean, it’s dead people all the time now. Every time I turn around, I have to ask if someone is corporeal before I start talking to them. It’s just so tedious.”
Klaus is making light of it in the way that only Klaus can, and Five finds himself strangely grateful for it. Klaus deserves better from Five, probably. Klaus has probably deserved better from everyone his whole life, but it seems the only people who have ever listened to Klaus are the ones who are already dead.
Someday, if Five ever figures out the Commission, maybe he’ll have the time and energy to be a better brother.
Someday.
But not today.
“If you had to do it again, start all over,” Five asks instead, “would you still take that first hit?”
At this, Klaus is quizzical. “And if you had to do it again,” he exchanges, stirring the pot again. “Would you still make that leap to the future?”
It’s rhetorical of course, and it’s not about a question of right or wrong. It’s a debate of eventualities, about how some people are just meant to do some things. The idea that you could avoid the horror is appealing, but the reality that you’d exchange one nightmare for another is too pressing to ignore.
All the things in life you can escape.
You can’t escape yourself.
Five watches as Klaus attempts to drain the macaroni, instead managing to drop the strainer and all the cooked noodles into the sink. Klaus cries out in apparent anguish. “My dinner!”
“It’s literally the easiest meal you can make,” Five chides.”
Klaus turns around, sheepish and desperate all at once. “Do you know how to make anything?”
Five grunts and gets to his feet with a roll of his eyes. “You really are useless, aren’t you?”
“So I missed out on the macaroni and cheese superpower,” Klaus says. “Kill me.”
“Too much effort,” Five says and he reaches for the keys. “Come on. I’ll buy you something instead.”
“Mac and cheese?” Klaus asks hopefully. “Because, I mean, being sober is great and all, but it makes me hungry, like, all the time. Are you hungry all the time?”
“I don’t care,” Five grouses back. “As long as you order me a coffee while we’re there.”
“And you’ll pay?” Klaus asks, following after him.
Five grunts on his way toward the door. “As long as I can drive.”
“You really are my favorite brother, Five,” Klaus says. “Really.”
And that’s how Five knows that Klaus can’t be trusted even when he’s sober.
Resolve is good, it really is.
When you run out of resolve, Five figures at least there’s still coffee.
-o-
Klaus does order Five a coffee in addition to a plate of macaroni and cheese with a side of pancakes. At the last minute, he requests a hamburger -- rare -- and a milkshake. When the food comes, Klaus eats a little of it all while downing four full sized sodas while Five nurses a single cup of blessedly bitter coffee.
When they’re done eating -- which is a loose description of Klaus antics over the course of lunch -- Five leaves a generous tip with an apologetic smile to their long-suffering waiter, who has been serenaded, hugged, accidentally spit upon and flirted with.
In all, it’s one of their more successful meals out.
Before they go home, Klaus slips off to the “little boys’ room,” leaving Five to mill awkwardly by the front door. He smiles politely at the receptionist, who seems to think he’s an adorable child waiting for his father, and rolls his eyes at the teenage girl who comes through the door with her family and gives him a double take.
As more patrons come in, he slinks off further into the shadows by the badly neglected news stand in the corner where there’s a bulletin board with public announcements. He considers getting out his phone to play an app or something, but he feels like that a sign of weakness. Bored, he scans the bulletin board more closely, wondering if the ad for a place to rent in his neighborhood is suspicious. He tears off one of the numbers for further investigation when he hears an unsettlingly familiar sound.
A whoosh. A thump.
Five freezes.
His heart skips a beat while his palms start to sweat. He feels a rush wash over him, sending a tingle down his spine. His head is momentarily light, and his reflexes are primed. Fight or flight, they call it, but Five only knows how to fight now.
He steadies his stance instinctively, bracing himself. He turns, looking for the source of the sound with anticipation. A message is an escalation. A message is a confirmation. Good or bad, Five can’t say, not until he reads it.
But where?
The news stand is empty? The receptionist is making change at the cash register. The girl has been seated with her family and an elderly couple is sitting in the waiting area.
Then, he hears the noise again.
But it’s less of a whoosh this time.
And the thump is a clank.
It’s tempered by the sound of a child laughing.
Five looks a little further, to the candy machine, where a child has just extracted a gumball. In line behind the child, his brother inserted his quarter. There’s another whoosh, another thump, and another gumball is produced.
Five feels his face go red.
There’s no message.
There’s no confirmation.
The two kids don’t look at Five as they scamper away.
When Klaus is finally out of the bathroom, Five drags him to the car, orders him to put on his seatbelt and sulks as he speeds the whole way home.
-o-
At home, he tells Klaus he has a headache.
“Do you want some aspirin or something? People don’t take aspirin, do they?” Klaus asks, wrinkling his nose. “What about Tylenol? I think we still have Tylenol, or did we throw that out?”
Five knows they’ve thrown all the medications out, but it doesn’t matter. “I don’t need aspirin.”
“But Tylenol?” Klaus inquiries.
“I don’t need Tylenol,” Five snaps.
“You know, coffee can exacerbate headaches,” Klaus tells him sagely. “It’s the caffeine.”
The headache had been a lie, but Five’s starting to feel the start of one talking to his brother about this. “I just need to be alone,” he says. “I need to lay down.”
“Oh,” Klaus says, and he sounds like he thinks this is a good idea. “Yeah, sleep. That’s good. You should do that.”
No doubt Klaus thinks he’s being a good brother who is appropriately aware of Five’s mental well being. Five will allow him this fantasy.
If only because it buys him some much needed time to be alone.
On his way to his room, Ben is waiting for him, arms crossed outside his room.
“You don’t have a headache,” he says.
Five glares at him. “I’ve had a headache every day for the last four decades,” he says, brushing past him. This is easy, considering the fact that Ben is mostly noncorporeal.
Being noncorporeal, Ben can follow him quickly and efficiently. “You shouldn’t like to your family.”
Five snorts. “Since telling them the truth worked so well?”
Ben sighs, following Five into his room. “You’re not okay, Five.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Five snaps, purposefully stepping through Ben to close his door. “But I don’t think aspirin is going to help.”
“You know that’s not what this is about,” Ben lectures him.
“Sure, I know what it’s not about,” Five agrees. “But I’m still trying to figure out what it is about, and I can’t do that while you’re all worried about me being socially adjusted and my caffeine intake.”
“It’s not healthy--” Ben starts emphatically.
“And neither is being hunted by the Commission,” he says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
Five sits down abruptly, pulling out his notebook. He knows Ben can talk to the others, but he still takes liberties with Ben that he won’t around the rest. He doesn’t doubt that Ben won’t keep his secrets, but he doesn’t care. After all, what is Ben going to tell the others? That Five’s still crazy?
They already know that.
And they wanted to get him therapy.
Besides, Ben’s the kind of person who won’t tell a person’s secrets until he deems it absolutely necessary. So unless Five is about to blow his own brains out, he’s probably safe from too much interference where Number Six is concerned.
He’s so busy thinking about this that he realizes he’s not thinking about his calculations. Frowning, he looks up. Ben’s already gone.
That’s for the best, Five tells himself.
He looks back at his calculations, and tells it to himself again.
That’s really for the best.
